I really enjoyed your post!  And I agree with the political and artistic
points although I question how bad UK food really is-- but I am an outsider
of course.

As someone who comes from the US, but who has visited the UK perhps a dozen
times over 30 years, I can tell you that the UK food avilable in restaurants
has indeed improved from my point of view, which is quite limited.  I can't
speak for what people serve at home, though I have certainly been served
good food in English homes (and also rather bad food).  In particular, there
are many, many more good foreign and ethnic restaurants in Britain than
there used to be.  It is a cliche, but I definitely think that one can
easily get inexpensive and good Indian and Pakistani food (from a variety of
regional cuisines) in the UK.

As I say, I can only guess about the UK which I have only visited
sporadically.  What I do know about is France, where I lived for 3 years
(not consecutively) and also spent maybe 18 full summers, went to school,
and ate in many people's houses. While French cuisisne is justifiably
admired throughout the world, what the French actually eat (especially
children, especially in school) is far ghastlier than what is eaten here in
the US and far worse than anything I have encountered in the UK.  The hot
lunches at my lycee were so terrible that I cannot describe them, and
moreover there were no facilities in the school where students could eat a
lunch brought from home.  Many students went home for lunch, but these were
obviously students whose parents could afford to feed them at home, and
primarily students with mothers who did not work who cooked them lunch at
home.

I have rarely encountered French food at someone's house that even remotely
resembles Frech Haute Cuisine.  A typical thing for a child to eat for
dinner -- I am thinking of a child I knew who preferred this to all other
meals -- is "jambon puree" (ham with mashed potatoes, where the mashed
potatoes were generally made from a powder).  The most favorite cheese for
children -- in the country of a thousand wonderful cheeses -- is "Vache Qui
Rit" (I believe it exists in the UK as "Laughing Cow") which is a vile
processed industrial product which does not resemble cheese.

France probably has worse socioeconomic problems than the UK -- it has
higher unemployment for example -- and there is a huge underclass of mainly
immigrants (mainly Muslim, too, causing all sorts of actual extremism and
much more racism and imtiolerance in response to the supposed extremism) who
live in extreme poverty and have no opportunities.So your conclusions about
the UK and poverty and food may well apply even more strongly to France.

Millie



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Simon Biggs" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, September 19, 2005 5:11 AM
Subject: [WDL] art and its effect upon politics, economics and gastronomy


Hmmm? This one just touches on too many of my favourite themes to let it
pass.

It is true that Jamie Oliver has sparked a debate and that embarrassed
politicians are now seeking to make the right noises about school dinners.
However, it is not that simple. Because many schools do not have the
infrastructure or money to upgrade the quality of food they prepare for kids
they have decided to out-source supply, with the result being that since
Oliver's TV series the percentage of schools relying on brought in re-heated
food has increased significantly. As such, the initiative has back-fired.

As an Australian I was surprised when I came to the UK (20 years ago) to
find that school kids often had a hot lunch cooked for them at school. I had
never come across this in Oz. There lunch would always be a light snack type
affair (perhaps a sandwich, a salad or something like that, which you would
bring to school with you). Of course the fact the UK has this alternate
arrangement is down to socio-economic factors that do not exist in Oz. There
is still a significant proportion of the population within UK society that
cannot afford to feed their kids properly (in Australia this socio-economic
bracket is composed amost entirely of an invisible group, the indigenous
population). The concern in the UK is not that kids cannot afford a decent
lunch but that when they get home in the evening their dinner is unlikely to
be adequate. So, the hot school supplied lunch was developed as a form of
social support. Many kids in the UK still rely on it as their main meal of
the day. I still find this shocking.

I have a kid going to a school in the UK (happily a little country school,
so few of the problems associated with the big inner-city schools ever
arise). Even though he goes to a small "well-off" country school I wouldn't
consider letting him eat the lunches they buy-in. It is garbage. Baked beans
(mostly sugar, colourants and emulsifiers), processed offal sacks (sausages,
they call them in the UK), processed Turkey brains (chicken nuggets, I think
they are branded), etc. He goes to school with a cheese sandwich and a piece
of fruit, which whilst nor especially substantial appears both adequate and
safe. I do not see that Oliver's program has made any effective difference
at his school (except they closed their little "tuck shop" - a cupboard of
crisps and sweets they would open at lunch time).

The main problem in the UK is not with school dinners (although they are
disgusting and should be eradicated) but with the distribution of wealth.
That kids live in families where there have been generations of poverty and
in a society that is not premised on social mobility is the main issue. Of
course if there was an easy solution there wouldn't be the problem. But to
regard Jamie Oliver's TV series as an effective political intervention is to
mistake its real import. Yes, it had effect. Yes, I think Jamie should be
congratulated to have taken on the issue. But to consider this as a
political act is to be blind to the political realities in the UK and the
conclusion that what is needed is profound social change if the underlying
reasons for bad school food are to be resolved. Of course far more important
issues than school food are at stake here.

As for art that had political effect?

Didn't a number of French artists sort of have a central role in determining
and promulgating the Revolution? I also seem to remember protest music
during the 60's and 70's had some sort of effect on the prosecution of the
Vietnam war. Some movies also contributed to that. Didn't a number of famous
Spanish artists have quite an effect on recruitment to the "left" during the
Spanish Civil War (although that was lost)? The role of artists in the early
formation of the Soviet state was central (a case where art and propaganda
were purposefully blurred, by the artists, and often to wonderful effect -
think Lizzitsky, Tatlin, Eisenstein, etc). In the post-War years of the 50's
and 60's a certain kind of American heroic art (visual, musical, literary,
etc) was very effective in galvanising the USA's sense of itself as not only
a military super-power but a cultural one as well.

I would argue that art does have political effect and in both obvious and
very subtle ways. Art is very important in how societies form and define
themselves and at this fundamental level there are few other human
activities that can have such profound political effect (although cooking
must be up there, as the French have demonstrated before).

As for UK food?

Again, as an Australian (you don't know what foody'ism is unless you have
spent time in Oz - or S.E. Asia for that matter), although I agree UK food
has improved dramatically over the past 20 years it is still severely
compromised by a lack of good fresh ingredients and ill-educated palates,
which means most people will eat almost any trash and thus caterers get away
with blue murder. I often despair at what I am expected to eat, whether at
my University canteen (totally inedible trash) or even in a so called
"gastro-pub" (where the menu's promise much but what you get on your plate
is a complete travesty of good food). I often have to politely explain I
cannot eat what I am expected to and go off somewhere else to find something
decent (if extremely simple). This can happen almost anywhere and at any
level of society. Generally speaking the Brit's do not have a clue about
food. Perhaps it is the legacy of those school dinners?

It is possible to eat well in the UK, but only when you are happy spending
£100 plus for two at a decent restaurant. The trick the Brit's have to learn
is how to keep up the quality right through the food-chain, not just in a
few good restaurants. In Sydney you can go to a cheap Lebanese, Vietnamese
or gastro-café and eat superb fresh seafood, prepared with respect. You can
then go to an expensive restaurant and expect the same quality, the main
differences being the possible inclusion of more exotic ingredients, a
higher level of creativity and imagination in the kitchen and a more
salubrious environment. The key factor here is that the basic quality of
food, whether at a café or a top-flight restaurant, is always there. One can
nearly always find very good "fish'n'chips" in Oz. In the UK you are taking
your life into your hands entering a "chippy".

This brings us back to the central political issue in the UK - the poor
distribution of wealth and the lack of social mobility. Food can be seen as
emblematic of this problem. One's palate is like one's purse. It might be
stuffed, but that is no guarantee of taste. So, just as the UK requires a
redistribution of money so too it requires a redistribution of taste.

Best

Simon


On 19.09.05 00:00, Margaret Penfold wrote:

> Millie Niss wrote
> "I don't suppose I think art can really change politics or economics,
either."
>
> Here in England we have recently had an example where art has changed
> government policy
>
> The French may not believe this but here in England we are interested in
food
> and certain celebrity chefs have turned cookery into an art form which
they
> practise on TV to the entertainment of millions.
>
> The government had been refusing to increase the amount spent on
ingredients
> for school dinners for a long time and as a result school dinners were no
> longer contributing toward's our children's health.
>
> Thanks to the celebrty chef and his campaign, the government has now
increased
> the school dinner budget and school cooks are concentrating on healthy
menus.



Simon Biggs
[log in to unmask]
http://www.littlepig.org.uk/

Professor, Art and Design Research Centre
Sheffield Hallam University, UK
http://www.shu.ac.uk/schools/cs/cri/adrc/research2/

**********

* Visit the Writing and the Digital Life blog http://writing.typepad.com
* To alter your subscription settings on this list, log on to Subscriber's
Corner at http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/writing-and-the-digital-life.html
* To unsubscribe from the list, email [log in to unmask] with a blank
subject line and the following text in the body of the message: SIGNOFF
WRITING-AND-THE-DIGITAL-LIFE

**********

* Visit the Writing and the Digital Life blog http://writing.typepad.com
* To alter your subscription settings on this list, log on to Subscriber's Corner at http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/writing-and-the-digital-life.html
* To unsubscribe from the list, email [log in to unmask] with a blank subject line and the following text in the body of the message: SIGNOFF WRITING-AND-THE-DIGITAL-LIFE